


as certain dark things are to be loved

by leiascully



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-22
Updated: 2014-04-24
Packaged: 2018-01-16 15:00:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 31
Words: 12,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1351690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It's called marriage."  A River-focused exploration of River and the Doctor's relationship, in fragments and memories, in dark moments and bright ones, honoring and disobeying, as long as they both shall live.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Never the Same River Twice

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: spoilers for everything aired to April 2014  
> A/N: Title from Pablo Neruda's [Sonnet XVII](http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/sonnet-xvii/).  
> Disclaimer: _Doctor Who_ and all related characters are the property of Russell T. Davies, Stephen Moffat, and BBC. No profit is made from this work and no infringement is intended.

It's over before River can even manage to draw (her hands slowed by the way she has to prop them on her hips to keep herself from tangling her fingers in his hair or grabbing his lapels). The Dalek fires. The Doctor falls. She kneels next to him, but then he's gone, zapped away by her vortex manipulator. 

And the fury of her in that moment: at the Doctor, at Amy, at the Dalek. 

(And she got it from her mother, didn't she, her fiery furious psychiatrist-biting Scottish mother, and the eternal endurance of her plastic father.)

She has lost everything, her history and her purpose, and all Amy can say is "He died." River understands. She does. There is no other way to say it, no easier way. But that's her everything, gone; she imagines her memories already as nebulous as fog, burned off by the heat of the end of all things. 

(And in a universe with no Doctor, she will never be stolen. In a universe with no Doctor, perhaps she will never exist. In a universe with no Doctor, there will never be a River Song, only the possibility of Melody Pond. As easy as that, she never was, and every moment she has ever spent with him is a dream. This passion, this heartache, this bliss, this anger: energy lost to the universe, locked away in a past to which there will never be a key.)

She shoots the Dalek. The Dalek is easy. River's heart is ice and her hand is steady. The Dalek is just a minor obstacle, and River's mercy is capricious on the best of days. She might have shot it just for fun, although she tries not to give in to that impulse terribly often. Poor Dalek. There's nothing else she can bring into her sights, no other outlet for her rage and her grief. Then again, it did try to kill the man only she has the privilege of murdering. One does get so possessive about one's victims, being raised as a bespoke psychopath.

The Doctor isn't dead, of course. He's much too clever for that. As long as there's breath still in him, there's hope. She's furious at him for nearly dying, for disappearing without a word, but he's the Doctor. She knows better than to expect otherwise. 

He wants to talk to Amy, which is right and reasonable and every other thing appropriate to where he is in his timeline, but she can't help flinching a bit. She wants it to be her. It is, after all, the end of the universe - he might spare her a moment in honor of the things he suspects before he flies off in a fairytale prison to reboot all of existence, possibly erasing everything they've ever been to each other.

Her handset buzzes. "Geronimo," it says. 

He will have the last word, but still, she smiles. Whatever he cannot yet remember, she is not forgotten.


	2. to honor

Something old. Something new. Something borrowed. Something blue. 

That's their wedding. The Doctor, older than old, older than the pyramid they're standing on, though not quite as old as Rory. Herself, still so new, still finding her feet, only on her third face. The Teselecta, borrowed, and their borrowed time. And the bow tie, blue. 

She wonders how she must look through his eyes after Berlin, after the beach at Lake Silencio. She wonders who he sees when he gazes at her. She has chosen to be River Song only half-suspecting who River Song might be. She has done the best she could. There are so many gaps in her memory, and so many things she wishes she didn't remember at all (half-truths, bumps in the night, a glimpse of dark suits - surely she has captured her demons now. Surely she will have peace now).

Hot blood flooded her face when he said he was embarrassed by her, but even having spent so little time face to face with him, she understood it was a feint. She has studied him all her life. She knows the Doctor's tactics. He nudges people, witters at them, goads them into doing something stupid. She stands there, steady in her high heels, and he turns to her parents and says he hopes they're proud.

He is proud.

She could not say what her heart does in that moment. It cries out, maybe, or it sings. It resonates or reverberates or breaks or heals. She has done well. Moreover, she has done good. She is free, after years of fighting her killer instincts. She has completed the work she began on the shores of the lake. She has freed herself from the spacesuit, from the sense of fixed and awful destiny. If nothing else, there is that. If she has failed, in this timeline, to save him from the fixed point of his death, at least she succeeded in her mission to show him the army whose cheers resound with gratitude at the sound of his name. She has held up a mirror to history and shown him the light he has brought to dark times and dark hearts. And he is grateful. And he is proud.

She is the author of her story now. She is the woman who changes the future, who does what she likes. Who marries the man she was raised to loathe, because it pleases her to do so. Who faces the universe whether or not he is by her side. Time waits for no man and neither will River Song, but time is frozen now and she holds the fate of history in her hands, and possibly in her heart.

She catches the other end of the bow tie in her fingers and lets the fabric slide over her skin. He stands a few uneasy inches away. He promised to marry her once before. He is pleased enough to marry her now, for all his sharp words. The Doctor lies: she knows that intimately, down in her bones. She knows all about the imperative of survival and the burden of foreknowledge. Don't they make a lovely pair of liars, careening across history?

He doesn't ask her if she consents and gladly gives. She's certain it's written all over her face. She consents, wholeheartedly and without reservation. She will give him her all until she has nothing left to give. 

"Look into my eye," he whispers, almost-but-not-quite touching her (because he won't, now, until she says he might - he sees the reason of her plan, respects the effort). In the glossy dark portal of his pupil, she sees her salvation. The intersection of their stories has given him the means to end this in their favor. She can have it all: the murder, the marriage, the slow expansion of the universe, time as fleeting as it ever was. He has spared her from the fate she was given. 

"Wife," he says, and she can tell that he savors the word, although they have no time for pleasantries. "I have a request." 

She kills him, once again, with a kiss, and his lips meet hers halfway. He pulls her tight against him as the universe melts around them, time resettling into its proper grooves.


	3. many happy returns

He always remembers her birthday. Well. He always remembers River Song's birthday. She can hardly blame him for the lost years when she cowered in terror of the Silence or rolled her eyes at Rory.

He was there when River Song was born, of course, if not exactly when Melody Pond was. It wasn't her best birthday. It wasn't her worst. They gave each other new life, that day in Berlin. 

It must be difficult, loving someone whom you cradled as an infant. She doesn't really remember him laying her in his old cot. She dreams she can remember the stars. But then again, a Time Lord hanging around with all these mortals - there isn't any way they could escape the _Emma_ vibe. It was always her least favorite of the Austens they were forced to read at school. At least he didn't dandle her on his knee, allowing them to escape one part of the Mister Knightley comparison, and she's no ingenue. One does grow up quickly in the clutches of a fringe religious order intent on changing history.

She records every birthday in the blue diary (her first birthday present, in a way). Ice skating on the Thames. Champagne at midnight, hovering over the Great Pyramid. A breakfast picnic on the lawn at the Taj Mahal. Dancing on the third moon of a planet whose name she can barely remember (but oh, the view). The several birthdays that make her smirk in satisfaction to re-read them, but it is her own diary, after all, and she refuses to censor it. 

River will remember every moment. 

It's charming that he never misses her birthday. He always finds her, wherever she is, even on the days she tries to give him the slip, or when she loses track of time. She wondered for a while if he was cheating and looking in her diary, or poring over the annals of history the way she did, trying to find herself, but in the end, she realizes it's the TARDIS. The TARDIS always knows where she is and when. The TARDIS leads him to her. 

"Hello, sweetie," she says, caressing the doorframe as she slips inside on another birthday. The Doctor is somewhere in the labyrinth of the ship, no doubt making last-minute adjustments to his smoking jacket or digging up a lost treasure to show her. "Thank you for remembering."

No whoosh or purr of engines, but she knows she is heard. She knows she is loved.

"River?" the Doctor calls. "Now, I know I had it a moment ago." His voice drifts down the corridor, mostly indecipherable mumbling.

"Coming, sweetie," she calls back, giving the console one last pat.


	4. You Are My Sunshine

Professor River Song doesn't live on the campus. She's hardly there anyway - her classes spend much more time in the field than in the classroom. She keeps her office hours (mostly), but at the end of the day, she smiles and waves goodbye to her colleagues and her assistants, and she catches the train to the edges of town.

Her cottage is quiet. She likes it that way. It's much easier to hear someone trying to sneak up. 

She has a garden. Frankly, there isn't much in it. Strawberries, so that she can have strawberries and cream with her scones when she's home to harvest them. Foxglove, because every wicked witch should have a bit of pretty poison to hand. And sunflowers, because they remind her of Amy somehow, their lovely open faces always turning toward the light. Maybe it's the way they turn gold when the sun shines on them, like the gloss of Amy's hair kindling copper in the summer. There is nothing dark about her mother: even her anger is as bright and pure as a flame. River should visit her more often, her and Rory and little Anthony, getting bigger every day. Funny how the time slips away.

The Doctor comes by now and then. He usually spends most of his time indoors, but one morning, he's there when the strawberries are, so she goes out to pick a few for their breakfast. He comes out to join her, wrapped in her dressing gown and clutching a mug of tea.

"Sunflowers," he says, startling away as the breeze blows and they sway toward him.

"Yes," River says, sitting back on her heels. "They remind me of Amy."

"Did she ever tell you we met Vincent Van Gogh once?" he asks, fingering the petals of one of the flowers.

"No, she didn't mention it," River tells him, searching among the leaves for the tiny berries. "Did you show him the stars?" She winks at him.

"He showed _us_ the stars, thank you very much," the Doctor says. "I'm not running some intergalactic shag-a-thon. This isn't Torchwood."

"And what else did you do?" River asks. She knows the story of Van Gogh's life as well as anyone does, and it certainly wasn't a happily-ever-after. That seems like something her mother would want to change.

"We added to his pile of good things," the Doctor says hesitantly. "I hope."

"I'm sure you did, my love," River tells him fondly. She has enough strawberries for now. She reaches out and the Doctor gives her his hand, helping her to her feet. 

"Good morning," he says. 

"We never do do things in the right order, do we?" she asks, laughing. 

"Only breakfast," he says. 

"Well then," she says. "We'll get started right away."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to [alexkingstons](http://alexkingstons.tumblr.com/post/79899551816/lets-talk-about-my-river-song-headcanons-amy-heavy) for generously letting me borrow from her headcanons.


	5. Lavender Blue, Lavender Green

They lie between rows of lavender on a blanket produced from the depths of the TARDIS' wardrobe. The scent of the earth and the scent of the flowers blend into a dizzyingly delicious perfume. River breathes deep, feeling her ribs rise against the Doctor's.

"When are we?" she asks idly. The where is clear enough: Provence doesn't feel like anywhere else in the universe.

The Doctor licks one finger and holds it up to the breeze, but River catches his hand. 

"Never mind," she says. "It doesn't matter."

And it doesn't. It is more than enough being here with him in this moment, whenever it is. 

She gazes up. The sky is velvety dark blue, bracketed by the long stems of lavender. The stars are particularly lovely in this now. She could brush her fingertips against them if only she could reach high enough, and streak silver over the Doctor's waistcoat when she touched him. She shifts closer to the Doctor. They are snug under the sprays of blossoms. The earth under them is warm from a long sweet day of sunshine. 

"Sweetheart," the Doctor says comfortably, and it doesn't seem to be part of any longer thought. Just that, just her, and the pleasure he takes in saying the word.

"We didn't save the world this time," she says, slipping her fingers between the buttons of his waistcoat. 

"We saved someone's world," he says. His voice is quiet. "It isn't every day you can save a world. And it was a particularly harrowing rescue, I'll thank you to remember." He reaches over to bop the tip of her nose.

"Yes, it was," she agrees. "I wasn't sure you and the kitten would both get out of that tree in one piece."

He laugh and she smiles, nuzzling into his shoulder.

"More restful than rebooting the universe again," he points out. 

"Absolutely," she says. "I hate having to break you in all over again."

"Liar," he says comfortably. 

She props herself up on one elbow so that she can lean down and kiss him. Even his breath smells of lavender, and his skin is as warm as the earth. "You know me too well," she murmurs.

"Impossible," he says. "I've never kissed you under the stars in a field of lavender in Provence before. I couldn't possibly know you too well until I've done that."

"There's any number of things we haven't done," she says. "Any number of places we haven't been, any number of sights we haven't seen."

"Exactly," he tells her, and the look on his face is so tender and loving that she can't speak. She settles for kissing him again, one palm braced on his chest so she can feel his hearts beating.

"Next stop?" he asks, hours later, as they watch the stars spin across the sky.

"Everywhere," she says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to syddoc for the prompt!


	6. When the Hurlyburly's Done

River wakes up alone in the dim of her room. She wraps a dressing gown around herself and pads through the corridors of the TARDIS on bare feet, trailing her fingers along the walls. The TARDIS lights a path for her. River drifts past the observatory, past the mostly-abandoned greenhouse, past the helter-skelter. The Doctor is in the library, sitting on a settee, his head bowed and his back to her. He's not wearing his jacket, and somehow he looks so very vulnerable, there in his braces and shirtsleeves with the hair just starting to curl at the nape of his neck.

She goes in to him and touches her fingertips to the tender skin above his collar. His hair is silky against her skin. He lets out a long shaky breath.

"You are forgiven," she says. "Always and completely."

He huffs out something that's not quite a laugh.

"Not even you, dear," he says. He looks up at her and his eyes are endlessly deep. 

"No?" she asks lightly. "Have you murdered the last hope of a universe lately?"

"Not quite lately," he murmurs. 

"Then shut up," she tells him. "And move over."

"You are definitely the daughter of Amelia Pond," he mutters, but he shifts to make room for her. She slips her arm around him and he turns his face to rest against her hair. 

"You come in here to sit alone in the dark and feel sorry for yourself, do you?" she asks. 

"I come to repent," he corrects her. "It isn't myself I feel sorry for."

"Isn't it?" she asks. "Misplaced your hair shirt? Too tired for self-flagellation? I'm sure the church can arrange some sort of thumbscrews if you need."

"Don't tease," he says, so low it's nearly inaudible.

"What makes you think my hands are any cleaner than yours, my love?" she asks. "The Doctor's wife is no less steeped in blood than the man himself. I should know - I've read all the stories." 

"I've destroyed worlds," he says. "My own, for starters."

"To save the rest of them," she points out. 

"I've ordered the killing of entire races," he tells her. "And worse - I didn't even have the gumption to do it myself."

"That's what marriage is all about," she says. "You do the washing up. I do the messy murdery bits."

He does laugh at that, but it's a brief, bitter sound.

"Anyway," she tells him, "if it's the Silence you're talking about, you only ordered the death of the ones who would have eventually devoured all of humanity just to get at you. One soul at a time, over so many years - they'd done enough damage. And you gave all those gun-crazy Americans a chance to use their weapons. Practically a good deed, at that."

"My fault," he begins, but she cuts him off crisply.

"No," she says. "You can mourn Gallifrey all of your days. You can mourn what they became, and you can mourn the measures you had to take to stop them from becoming worse. But you will not take my revenge from me. You will not take the responsibility for the Silence. I take the weight of that. I bear that burden. You will not take the solace of a terrified little girl."

He takes her hand between his and lifts it to his lips. "How can you be certain their death added to the good? How can you be certain that only those responsible were killed?"

"Ask your friend Tasha Lem sometime," River says. "It's amazing how much control the church can have over history. They scrubbed every copy of that footage of Neil Armstrong's foot, eventually. Her priests are safe." 

"Thank you," he murmurs.

"I'm a psychopath," she chides. "I'm not rude." 

"I wish you hadn't had to go through any of that," he offers, not looking at her.

"I am as they made me," River says. "The only match they could imagine for the Doctor. Not the worst childhood anyone's ever had, honestly, and besides which, it's mine to regret or not. Don't you dare take that from me."

"I would have spared you the pain," he says.

"The pain gave me something to strive for," she tells him. "You will not pretend my choices were not my own from the moment I broke free. I chose River Song. And I chose you." She lets her voice soften into a caress. "Oh, my love. You are so very important, but you aren't the linchpin of the universe. Don't turn our triumphs into defeats to feed your guilt. I climbed out of that space suit. I unraveled all those years of programming. Don't tell me a moment of that was your doing."

He is quiet for a moment. "You're definitely Rory's daughter as well. He never let me get away with anything. Formerly plastic Romans, eh. You can't say anything to a man who was alive for two thousand years, and all in the right order." 

"You can't weigh the lives you've taken or lost against the lives you've saved," she tells him. "They're too different. I shouldn't have to tell you of all people not to waste your time imagining the infinite iterations of a universe in which you did something else on any particular day. And oh, Doctor, no matter what you've done, people love you. It doesn't erase the hurt, but it isn't nothing. Do I need to build you another beacon?"

"Why would I need a beacon," he murmurs, "when I've got you right here?"

"The penny drops," she says, her voice light. "More than any living thing, I would have suffered, so I know what I'm sparing you from."

She stands up, her hand still cradled between his. He gazes up at her, rubbing his thumb slowly over her knuckles.

"It would definitely be difficult to imagine a better match," he says softly. 

"Oh, husband, don't get all sentimental on me. I've just only got you not feeling sorry for yourself." She smirks. "Come back to bed and all is forgiven."

He lets her pull him up off the settee. "You don't seem tired."

"I'm not in the least bit tired," she tells him.

"Oh!" he says. "Ah. I see."

"Good eyes, that man," she says, and leads him away from his history into his future.


	7. Once upon a time

The Doctor lies with his head in River's lap as she runs her fingers slowly through his hair, luxuriating in a moment of peace.

"I can't wholly endorse your tactics this time around," the Doctor says in a lazy, dreamy voice. 

"Ah, but the catsuit is always effective," River reminds him. "Sleek, practical, convinces people I'm not at all deadly up until the point at which they discover the error of their way, usually around the time they hit the floor." She smiles down at him. "The fact that it's also very good at making you jealous is just a side benefit. Anyway, we recovered the artifacts, didn't we? Safely back at the museum where they belong."

"Hmph," the Doctor said. 

"Forget about the catsuit, then," River tells him.

"Forget it, hah," the Doctor declares. "I shall see it in my dreams."

"You won't have to wait that long," River teases. "But later." She keeps combing her fingers through his hair, watching his eyelids droop. "Tell me a story."

"A story about what?" He nestles deeper into her lap. 

"Oh, you," she says. "Tell me about the tempestuous young Time Lord, before you stole the TARDIS and ran away."

"The days of Gallifrey, eh?" he asks. A smile curls the corner of his mouth. "We did have some fun at the Academy."

"Oh dear," she says indulgently. "Tales out of school."

"Not many to tell, really," he says, but that little smile lingers.

"Liar," she murmurs, brushing his hair off his forehead. "All right, keep your secrets. It's all right if you know everything about me, but I can't hear about your schooldays."

"I didn't write a dissertation on your past," he grumbles.

"Fair enough," she concedes. "Still, my life is an open book compared to yours." 

"I did have a nickname," he says. 

"I hope it was filthy," she tells him. "Or completely undignified." 

He snorts. "Theta Sigma," he says, a little nostalgic pride leaking into his voice. "Thete for short."

"How disappointingly unexceptional," she murmurs.

"I'll thank you for not tarnishing my past," he grumbles, hooking one finger up through the belt of her dress. "Thete is a perfectly respectable nickname."

"Not Siggy, surely?" she teases. "That would have been much funnier."

"This is why you're not in charge of nicknames," he tells her, trying to be stern.

"I am in charge of very nearly everything else," she points out. "I can leave off nicknames."

"You are not," he counters, eyes mostly closed with pleasure as she strokes his hair. She tugs gently at his forelock and he opens one eye. She raises an eyebrow. "Yeah, you are."

"Absolutely I am," she says. "And I'll thank you not to forget it, sweetie."

"That's all right, then," he says, letting his eyes drift closed. 

"I'm so glad you agree," she says, her fingers starting their slow route all over again.


	8. No Place Like Home For The Holidays

River makes a point of having Christmas dinner with her parents. There's always a place laid for her, and always one for the Doctor. Amy makes certain of buying the crackers with the silliest hats. River's never quite fits over her head, but she makes an effort all the same. There is always wine, and a goose, and plenty of bread sauce, and a pudding so soaked in brandy that the flame nearly singes Rory's eyebrows as he lights it. They do presents afterward, and eat chestnuts by the fire.

"Your mister coming along?" Amy asks as River hangs up her coat. 

"Oh, probably," River says breezily. "You never know when he'll turn up."

"Just wondering," Amy says. "You can always take his present with you." She wraps her arms around River. "You know you're more than enough to make Christmas all on your own."

"I love you too," River tells her. "My dear little mum."

"At least you didn't say old," Amy says, wiping tears away. 

"Never," River reassures her. 

"Is that River?" Rory calls from the kitchen. "Surely River wouldn't come for Christmas and not even say hello."

"Hello, Dad," River calls back. 

"Whatever you do, do not go and shake anything that's under the tree," Rory cautions.

"Good advice," Amy says solemnly, but there's a twinkle in her eye. "Dinner's in ten minutes or so, right, Mister Pond?"

"Make it fifteen," Rory calls.

"Time for a glass of wine, then," Amy says.

"Yes, please," River says. 

"That's my girl," Amy says. 

Bliss, River thinks, and she holds out her glass.


	9. like a photograph, unfinished

She sketches all his faces in the blue diary. There are the stories, of course, but sometimes she's in the right place at the right time to meet him by accident. River always knows him, no matter who he is. She's careful not to interact directly with him most of the time when he isn't wearing the right face, but now and again, she can't resist. It's absolutely the best when he's a grumpy old man; he glares around him as if he can't understand why someone would speak to him in such a familiar manner.

He's always the Doctor, but he isn't always her Doctor. He isn't the home of her heart, and it breaks her in half to speak to him, even in jest, and have his eyes slide over her as if she doesn't matter. 

There are days she wishes he weren't worth it, but he is always, always worth it. And so she carries on, like a good little soldier, and envies her father the certainty of his millennia outside the Pandorica.


	10. Spat

"Idiot!" she shouts, stomping into the TARDIS. River never needs a key, and no matter how furious she is, she always has a gentle touch on the door.

"You're the one who shot him!" the Doctor shouts back. "I was trying to talk things over!"

"Oh, yes, the man with the plan," River snipes. "You wouldn't have had anything to talk over if you hadn't told that awful joke in the first place. Hasn't anyone ever told you that you never say anything like that around a Yeamorg Warrior? They're very sensitive!"

"Then why do they wear so much armor?" the Doctor demands loudly, stamping his foot and looking completely, completely ridiculous. 

"Shouting at me isn't going to make everything all right, sweetie," River says, making the vowels sharp. 

"Shooting at people isn't going to solve anything either!" the Doctor exclaims. 

River shrugs. "He isn't chasing us anymore, is he? Problem solved. Anyway, I only shot him in the shoulder. Extremely survivable."

"That isn't the point, River," the Doctor tells her. "We don't careen around the universe leaving chaos and violence in our wake. At least, I don't."

"Don't you?" she asks, ice in her voice. "Funny, I thought that was essentially your job description. You don't always stick around for the violence, do you? The Doctor, who heals all wounds with an ice lolly."

"That's not how we do things!" he says. 

"No, sweetie, that's not how _you_ do things," River says. "Not all of us have an eternity to wait for our enemies to forget us. Some of us do what needs to be done, particularly when it comes to protecting you."

"I didn't ask you for that," the Doctor tells her.

"You didn't need to," River says. "The universe is better off with you still in it, jokes and all. Ask any of us. Ask Martha Jones. You're lucky enough to have a bespoke psychopath to smooth your way and you don't even say thank you."

"I should thank you for shooting someone?" the Doctor asks, incredulous, hands on his hips.

"You should thank me for doing your dirty work," River tells him. "Now and always. Because I will always be there to take care of the situation you can't bring yourself to deal with. River Song, gun for hire. But you might show a little gratitude. We haven't all got your weak stomach, and for good reason."

He glares at her, but the look in his eyes is softening. 

"I do tend to get into situations," he says. "And he did run much faster than we did."

"Yes, he definitely did," River says, crossing her arms and leaning against the console of the TARDIS.

The Doctor inclines his head. "Thank you, River."

"For?" she asks.

"For not minding using your gun from time to time," he tells her. "It isn't fair of me to punish you. It's my fault, the things that happen to us. The things that happened to you." 

"Well," she says. "Whatever happened to me, I'm perfectly all right now. And if we're being fair, I do create some of the situations in which we find ourselves. But not nearly all of them."

"You do create some very notable situations," he says. "And many of them don't involve a gun at all. Or very many clothes, now that I think of it." 

"They could, if you're feeling adventurous," she says, winking at him. 

He looks briefly thrilled and terrified at once. "No, thank you," he tells her. "Remember the last time you were waving that thing about inside the TARDIS."

"Temporal grace, you said," River reminds him, rubbing the console comfortingly. 

"Yes, well," the Doctor fumbles, "I was wrong. And I was wrong about the joke. And I'm sorry." He sighs. "I do treat you like a mercenary sometimes. I dunno - maybe I envy your certainty."

"This is my certainty," she says, waving her hand to indicate the room. "I would do anything to preserve this. Whatever it takes."

"Sometimes I think you're a much better Time Lord than I am," the Doctor says wryly. 

"Nonsense," River tells him, brisk and businesslike. "You're the very best Time Lord I know. Anyway, someone's got to hold the high ground. On a slow day, you can always chase me around the galaxy."

"I'll always be chasing you," he says with a smile. 

"That's more like it," she tells him. 

He saunters up to the console. "Space Florida? No guns allowed, and they've got automatic sand."

"Now we're living dangerously," she says, and pulls the lever.


	11. ink and paper

She has the blue diary for weeks before she writes in it. There's the hospital and then the trial, and she hasn't much to say about either. But he sleepa with it under her pillow, and she won't let anyone else touch it, not the nurses or the guards. One look at her practiced defensive stance and the desperation in her eyes and they give up.

The diary is perfect. The covers are smooth, butter soft, pleasingly ridges under her fingertips. The pages are a lovely weight, richly textured - even writing her name feels important. It smells like old books and new books at once. She thinks she'll always know the scent of it. The diary perfumes her dreams. She wakes up with her palm flattened over the cover.

The diary is important, she can tell. It's a promise of some kind. She isn't sure what it means, but she won't let it go.

She'll just have to ask the Doctor, the next time he sees him (and that is clutched close to her heart too as she sleeps).


	12. Time Lord domestic

She sleeps more often than he does. She's more himany-wumany. He sits beside her when he can calm his restless feet, reading a few dozen of the books from the library. She likes it best when he uncorks the encyclopedia - it smells of dust and sunshine and a delicious, unregretful melancholy.

She dreams of strange things when he's there: Gallifrey's silver trees glowing under the orange sky, snippets she suspects are fragments of other companions' memories snagged in the telepathic interface, and once, a strange round little man who looks at her so knowingly that she deftly stuns him before he can say a word. 

It's very pleasant, all this domesticity, now that she's adjusted to it. Certainly it isn't the life Mels foresaw, but she's River Song now. She dreams of much darker things alone on her cot in Stormcage. The rain has a particular thud that manages not to be soothing. She much prefers the sound of rain on the roof of the TARDIS. 

"Good morning," the Doctor says, rubbing her back

"Is it?" she asks. "Morning, I mean, it seems all right so far." 

"Morning enough," he says, bopping her nose and jumping out of bed. "There's an entire universe waiting, River!"

"The universe can wait until after breakfast," she tells him, stretching luxuriously.

"Or the universe has breakfast," he reminds her. His face has a slightly pleading look.

"Oh, all right," she says. "The Doctor and River Song, next stop breakfast."


	13. symphonica

"River," he says, and there is more music in her name than in the stars themselves.


	14. Stormcage

She doesn't mind the Stormcage, really. The Doctor comes and wafts her away often enough, and soon she's able to waltz in and out of the place as if she owns it. But it's much easier coming back than escaping permanently. It helps cement her dangerous reputation, and anyway, she promised. It's a bit like her study carrel at university: isolated, cold, drafty, bad food at seemingly-random intervals as the atmosphere distorts her sense of time. At least she does get a lot of work done. There's ever so much history to sift through, and people will keep making more of it. 

For the Doctor, it must be nearly as good as sticking her into a museum. At least he knows when she's in there, nothing much can get at her. When she's out and about, she certainly knows how to defend herself. She wonders what the card for her display would say. 

_**River Song** , Ph.D., murderess, psychopath, hero  
Known aliases: Melody Pond, Mels Zucker, Melody Malone, the Doctor's Wife, child of the TARDIS  
WARNING: THIS SPECIMEN IS USUALLY ARMED AND EXTREMELY DANGEROUS  
Do not approach. Do not provoke.  
Publications: various  
Specimen Song appears to have Time Lord DNA as well as human  
Effects of extended exposure to the Time Vortex unknown  
Habitat: 1930s New York (Earth), Stormcage, Luna University, Leadworth (England, Earth)_

The telephone rings. The guard picks it up and listens for a moment, then hands it to her.

"Get your coat," the Doctor says, and rings off, and that old familiar thrill tingles in her stomach. She beams at the guard as he takes his phone. 

"I am allowed conjugal visits, aren't I?" she says. "You might want to find somewhere else to be for a bit."

He eyes her suspiciously, but shifts himself down the corridor. She does enjoy it when they learn from their experiences. River fluffs out her hair and straightens her clothes, waiting for the wheeze of a madman coming to sweep her off her feet.


	15. Al fresco

River sucks at her fingertips, licking at the very last of the sauce of the dish they've been eating. She couldn't possibly pronounce the name of it, not with her human vocal cords and mouth. But it was certainly delicious. She didn't even try to resist her urge to eat with her fingers. Somehow it became even more delicious when she scooped it up and carried it to her lips with her hands. Even the traces of it are intensely flavorful. She savors the aromas from the dish, fingertips still in her mouth. Maybe it's the salt on her skin. Maybe it's some accident of body chemistry reacting with the alien substances. Maybe it's just the magic of the setting. A picnic always adds a little something to the atmosphere. 

The Doctor lounges on the blanket next to her, his jacket draped open and his bow tie slightly loose around his throat. She feasts her eyes on the planes and angles of him, bathed in the sweet warm light of this planet. He looks relaxed, very pleased with himself, remarkably at ease. The anxious energy that usually animates him has calmed. He looks, for once, as if he is living in this moment, rather than imagining the possibilities and potentials of a hundred different anytimes. 

"Penny for your thoughts," she says.

"Hmm?" he says, and pauses. "You know, I can't even think of what I was thinking about." He gazes at her, his eyes very clear. 

"Perfect," she says. "That's how a holiday should be."

"Teaching an old dog new tricks, Doctor Song?" he teases her. 

"You're a very tricky old dog indeed," she teases back. "But I do believe I have some very novel things to show you." 

"Perhaps we'd better go inside, then," he suggests. "I know that twinkle in your eye, River. It always means my buttons start coming undone."

"Oh, but it's ever so much more fun out in the fresh air," she tells him. "Haven't you ever tried it, in your thousand years knocking around the galaxy?" He shakes his head. "Then I'm not sure you've lived."

"By all means, Professor," he tells her. "Educate me."

She leans over and kisses him, her lips curving against his as she smiles.


	16. sidearm

She knows immediately when he steps into a moment she occupies. She feels it like an electric thrill through her body, the sense of an absence restored. He is not an extension of her body - more like a cherished weapon, worn close and carried long, until reaching for it at the moment of crisis is as instinctive as breathing, and deploying as simple as catching water in a cupped palm or letting it spill through her fingers. They use each other, stepping around and through each other's reach in practiced patterns. They don't speak. One does not need words to tell the knife how to cut, whether through a confining rope or the thin red skin of an apple to peel one long perfect spiral.

The Doctor dances, and River dances with him.


	17. pendulum

There are days that River wishes that she could feel nothing about the Doctor. That she could be indifferent to him. That she could think of him without the sudden flare of light outlining the shape of her soul, exposing her heart and mind, projecting the luminous shapes of her thoughts like an x-ray. She was raised to hate him; now she adores him; life with no middle ground is exhausting.

She dates, of course. At university, she's still figuring out exactly who River Song might be. (Certainly not celibate. Certainly not shy.) She submerges herself in living, sampling new foods and new species, staying up all night for no reason, sipping drinks that make her hair curl even more tightly. As if Mels didn't have a turbulent enough adolescence, River Song has to go through the process all over again.

She dreams of the Doctor standing under a spotlight, and all the rest of the world is dark. The look on his face is ridiculous, but he's all she can see. She wakes up half-angry, half-longing. 

He never comes to see her. She has the diary. All the pages are blank. He hasn't left her a single clue except for the glimpse of the Teselecta and the smooth blue covers of the book. But that's the whole of it. She gave him more than that, she thinks. A kiss. A life. 

Somehow she doubts River Song is patient. Passionate, yes. More inclined to take matters into her own hands than wait around. She will be pleased to be River Song through and through, when it happens. 

She wonders if growing up with her parents shaped her even more than being raised by them would have. Surely the tempest of Amy's soul would have quieted by the time Melody arrived. She would have known only Rory's steady, stalwart heart and his courage, not the gawky boy who tagged after them like a lost puppy. She would have missed out on so much of who they were, one way or another. River got the fire and she got the devotion too: a dangerous combination for a woman as inclined to hold the universe at gunpoint as save it. 

She does not call. He will come if she calls; she knows it in her bones. She makes a choice, every day, and every day she is a little more herself.

(But those long inquisitive hands, shaping history so tenderly. That mouth, pursed in thought. The slim tweedy shape of him, striding confidently off into the unknown. And above all, that mind and those hearts. She will have every morsel of him to savor or she will tear the universe from its foundations.)


	18. Early Days

He dazzles her. Every night, it's another party, another shining moment, another pivot point of history, another hour that will never be replicated anywhere in the universe. There are gowns and shoes that fit her as perfectly as if they'd been made for her, always daring, always gorgeous. On the Doctor's arm, she goes to concerts and restaurants and museums and parks. They dawdle through markets reeking of perfume and spice. They sit in breathless silence under glowing skies and dark ones. 

The TARDIS materializes and the Doctor strolls out and leans against the bars of her cell.

"Well?" he drawls. 

"Give us a mo'," River says, picking the lock of her cell. It took her a few days to get the knack of it - it's not a simple lock, but she picked up a few helpful hints here and there, and a really quite good set of electronic lockpicks for the various layers of security. The lock clunks open and River nudges the door with her toe. 

"Hello, sweetie," she says, because he gets that gleam in his eyes every time she says it. It's a very promising gleam, delicious and desirous, and when she doesn't feel like going out, it's easy enough to convince him to stay in. He hasn't been quite as fumbly and awkward as she would have expected him to be from the general air of clumsiness, but then, he has got centuries of experience. It's as if a switch flips somewhere, and suddenly he's a smooth operator, all suavity and firmness. She very much enjoys staying in. 

"Took you long enough, didn't it?" he grumbles in a pretense of grumpiness. She can see right through him by now: those are happy shoulders, and amused eyebrows.

"New lock," she says. "The third one this week. Anyway, haven't you got a time machine? Perhaps if you could fly her properly, my tardiness wouldn't matter. Or if you called ahead."

"That would take all the excitement out of it," he tells her, resting a solicitous hand at the small of her back. His fingers are warm through the thin cloth of her Stormcage-issue tank top. 

"Not all of the excitement," she says, glancing up at him. "I've always found that anticipation can be _very_ exciting indeed."

"Stop it," he says warmly, and his hand drifts over her back to her hip, pulling her closer. 

"Make me," she challenges. 

He looks down at her with his eyes all smouldery, and she tingles all over. Then he clicks his fingers and the door of the TARDIS swings open. 

"Ooh, I love it when you do that," she says, leaning into him as they stroll into the TARDIS.

"I know you do," he tells her. "You're the one who told me I could do it."

"Spoilers," she says automatically, but her heart thuds, half-sweet and half-painful. She treasures every particle of information he lets slip. She can't get enough of knowing who she'll be someday, and who they'll be to each other. He is already more than she could have imagined, loving and loathing him with Mels' angry heart. 

"Where are we going tonight?" she asks. "Olympus Mons? The outer reaches of the universe? Or Atlantis? I do love a bit of sunbathing. Surely there's a bikini in the wardrobe somewhere."

"Incorrigible," he says, shepherding her up the stairs, his fingertips still pressing gently into her back. "You choose. Show me. Fly her, River Song.".

"Me?" she says, startled. 

"You," he tells her. "Go on. I know you can."

"And you trust me?" she asks, meaning both of them, the man and especially the ship she wounded.

"With my life," he says simply, and the console vibrates lovingly under her hand. 

She takes hold of the zigzag plotter, breathes, and pulls.


	19. for better or for worse

There are moments of disappointment, of course: he's an egomaniac of the first water, which makes sense for a practically-immortal and endlessly-ancient Time Lord (even the name speaks volumes), and besides that, he can be rather petty and high-handed and squeamish. But it doesn't seem to matter, most of the time. If nothing else, he's teaching her to be human, to accept weakness rather than exploiting it. It would be so, so very easy to destroy him, for all his cleverness. She could undo him in a moment, and he would let her. She could slick poison on her lips again and he would stand there and kiss her back, accepting her gesture as divine retribution.

She wonders why. She wonders what happens to him, with him, with them in the future, that he would face her as his executioner and never flinch. She wonders if it was anything like her instinct in 1969 to somehow disassemble the spacesuit, to prevent the astronaut, to untangle the complicated web of circumstance that binds them to the shores of Lake Silencio. Or perhaps it's his instinct to surrender to history, to the woman raised to kill him. 

They are a fixed point, or at least a fixed orbit, the two of them circling each other from the Big Bang to the last glint of a dying star.


	20. top of the class

One day Professor River Song looks up from her lecture notes and there's the Doctor, half in shadows in the back of the room, lanky and insouciant with his feet up on the desk. She doesn't miss a beat - she carries on with the lesson. She's a professional, after all. After she's finished and the crowd of students has cleared out, she lets him come to her. If he must come and visit her at work, she's going to keep her dignity about her. 

"Office hours," she tells him, and makes him tag along after her. She moves around her bit of office, putting things away, replying to the odd message, filing her notes in the proper place. He putters about after her until she glares him into a chair. 

"You're very good at that," he says. "And the other part, the talking."

"Yes," she says. "I am."

He looks her over with calculating eyes. "Where are we?"

"Ages along," she says, reaching into a desk drawer for her diary. "Asgard?"

"No," he says. "You and I just got back from Calderon Beta."

"Ah," she says. "That was an exciting day."

"Pivotal," he agrees. 

"I've already done that one twice," she says. "You're always talking to someone. Not that I mind if you bring a third party along, but it would be nice to know in advance. One needs a chance to prepare oneself."

"It's always you, dear," he says, with a slightly long-suffering sigh. "It's never anybody but you."

She winks at him.

"Funny though," he tells her, "to see you then and to see you now. Quite the contrast."

"Given world enough and time, even my rough edges get filed down," she says wryly. "From psychopath to lecturer. I'm not certain whose bright idea it was to put me in charge of molding young minds."

"You're River Song whenever you are," he says. 

"Thank you, sweetie." She perches on the armrest of his chair. "Anything particularly special about this visit?"

"I just wanted to see you," he says. "When you knew me."

"Yes," she says. "I understand the feeling."

His hand finds hers and their fingers weave together.


	21. papa's gonna buy you a mockingbird

She finds the cot one day while she's wandering through the TARDIS. She isn't certain if she stumbles across it herself, or if there's a gentle nudge from a multi-dimensional ship with a sense of humor and a mind of her own. The wood is smooth and cool under her palm. The cushion smells faintly of lavender, and the mobile clicks and glints.

Somewhere, in some part of her heart she didn't know existed, there is a secret hope. She doesn't tell the Doctor. She couldn't bear to have her hope denied, however gently, for whatever reason (and there are so many reasons: danger, genetic incompatibility, the effects of radiation, the afterthoughts of a curse).


	22. Endear Yourself To Me

"Where've you been?" the Doctor demands.

"A question I could ask you with equal ease, my love," River says, swanning into the parlor of Vastra and Jenny's house. "I left you a message."

"Yes, but it took some time to decipher," he grumbles. "What happened to 'Hello, sweetie'?"

River settles herself into an armchair. "Well," she says, "One spends enough time in Victorian London, one picks up a bit of the parlance of the times, I suppose."

"By which you mean when you hang around with Jenny and Madame Vastra," he says. "You've started using their endearments."

"At least I haven't started telling you I'll destroy you honorably in glorious battle," River says sweetly. 

"I might prefer that," the Doctor says, still Mister Grumpy Face. 

"They haven't got a trademark on 'my love', you know," River tells him, rising from her chair and going to stand behind his, winding her arms around him. He leans his head against her, his hair soft against her cheek. She breathes in the scent of him. 

"I got used to sweetie," he tells her. "It was ours. It was mine, a gift from you."

"I'm allowed to give you more than one gift, surely," she tells him, kissing his head. 

"I don't think you ever stop," he says softly. 

"Measure for measure, my love," she says, and they rest in their quiet tableau, creating their own pocket universe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Headcanon from [alexkingstons](http://alexkingstons.tumblr.com/post/79899551816/lets-talk-about-my-river-song-headcanons-amy-heavy).


	23. Toasty

River warms her hands at the edges of the flames. The fire is large and people walk around it, chatting happily. Cows huff and mumble, their bells clinking quietly. The air is full of the scent of smoke and hide and whiskey vapor and toasting oats. Someone gives River a crown of yellow flowers and she settles it over her curls and holds her hands back out to the fire. The Doctor prowls around the edges of the fire, sauntering back around to her. He has a crooked crown himself. It slips over his eyes and he pushes it impatiently out of the way. It gives him a rakish, charming air. 

"Beltane?" he says. "Didn't know you were religious."

"I'll call on anyone necessary to keep you protected," she says. "Surely someone owes me a few favors."

"Hmm," he says. "And nothing else about this particular celebration interests you, hmm?"

"Well," she draws. "I do love a good fertility ritual."

"Archaeologists," he mutters. "Can't take them anywhen. They've just got to make sure all the details line up."

"Oh, sweetie, this is a purely personal interest," she purrs, cupping his cheek with her hand. She pulls him in close for a lingering kiss as the fire heats one side of them and passion singes the rest. Just as well. It's going to be cool in the grass.


	24. in a nutshell

"River," he says, pacing back and forth, "you and I - we'll never be like other people. We aren't other people."

"Sweetie," she says, patient but with edges to her consonants, "why would you ever think I'd want to be like other people?"


	25. underwater

River isn't supposed to remember any of it. The psychologist assigned her by the court that out her in Stormcage assured her over and over, as if it knew (it being the preferred pronoun for among the hermaphrodites of its desert planet of origin - she wondered if it were also being punished, banished to a world of endless dreary rain). She thought of biting it in the grand tradition of Pond women, but she was trying for a few extra privileges for good behavior.

Later, when she was pardoned, she found another psychologist, ironically also from that desert planet, and likewise a hermaphrodite. It never tells her she doesn't remember the things she dreams of: dark deep water, the metallic drag of recycled air, pressure fighting pressure, the reek of plastic, the glint of little fishes swimming past the smoked glass of the helmet visor. The Silence did their best to wipe her memory, but some things cut too deep not to leave a scar, even one only visible in certain lights. 

She doesn't see it often, but she likes the psychologist. Somehow it helped to know that someone else could glimpse the damage. River Song is the impossible astronaut and the teenage disaster and the terrified child and the weaponized woman and the confident professor and the space vixen all at once. Bless her psychologist; it handles every bit of her with ease. And it is so human to need to talk to someone. The mere fact of it reassuring her is a reassurance.

She still goes with the Doctor to the universe's loveliest aquarium. She stands, facing the glass, which is sleek and implacable despite the weight of the water behind it. Fish and sharks gleam as they slice through the water. Coral glows. It is all incredibly beautiful, unreal in the colors and shapes and grace of the display. It terrifies her. 

River breathes and stares. The Doctor stands next to her, entranced. After a moment, she feels him stir at her side, but she won't look away. If she looks away anything might happen. The Doctor takes her hand. 

"River," he says quietly, and she starts to come back to herself. "I'm sorry. I forgot."

"I never will," she says, holding tightly to his fingers. She has room all around her, but the recollected claustrophobia of the space suit is too compelling. But she will face her fears. She will not be haunted.

She stays in front of the display until the beauty of it has overwhelmed her, has struck her to the bone, has filled her mind and heart. And then she consents to a cup of tea, leaving on her terms. One way or another, one day or another, River Song will free herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Sandbar, and with a tip of the hat to Lois McMaster Bujold and the honorable and socially-minded herms of Beta Colony.


	26. I and love and you

He says it over and over, with every touch, with every glance, with every outing. He says it every time he has her back. He says it every time he sweeps in and steals her away from a tricky situation. He says it with the fierce possessiveness of the way he hovers at her shoulder. He says it with the way his eyes linger on her face and on her body. He says it with the way that they fight, careful not to shatter anything precious beyond repair.

But he never really says it.

She notices. 

(It needs saying, once in a while.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from "I and Love and You" by the Avett Brothers.


	27. tenebrae

A darkness lit by candlelight. That is her life before the Doctor. That is her life with the Doctor. She learns to kindle her own flame, after a while, and how to bank it to keep it burning. She was used to blazes in her youth, hot sudden catastrophic flares that burned out and left her hollow. She is steadier now, less incandescent. It does not make things easier.

Her life in the Library - her afterlife, more to the point - is a darkness. Vastra's seances are the candlelight. There is a man in London with an invisible wife. There is a man (or more than a man) in London on a box on a cloud with a less-than-strictly-corporeal wife. She supposes that technically many weddings are only binding until death. On the other hand, she's more displaced than she is dead. He of all people ought to understand that she could be much, much deader. 

It isn't that her life in CAL isn't pleasant. She's with her team. She loves the children. But she has spent her years with extravagance, wild and free and unbounded. She has left her imprint on the universe like a lipstick kiss on a stark white collar. Her imagination contains multitudes, but she misses her body: the jolt of adrenaline as she flirts with danger, the sizzle of passion, the comfortable heat of tea, even the bruises that bloomed under her tender skin after a fight. She misses her body next to the Doctor's body, the way they spoke to each other without words. 

She misses unpleasantness. She misses disaster. She has never flinched from heartbreak or headache. She cannot stain this white dress, no matter how she tries. And he has left her here in this infuriating perfection. He has sheltered her, as if she ever asked to be hidden from woe. She understands his purpose - his hearts are tender, and he would rather an ellipsis than a period - but it is cruelly kind. 

But in the darkness, there is candlelight. He will never forget. He will avoid her and carry only her memory, so that she is safe forever. It is not what she wants. But she understands. 

Marriage is a compromise.


	28. take the last warmth of my lips

River is asleep, but not really asleep. She drifts in that dreamy-soft-dozy half-waking, neither one place nor the other. She isn't certain whether she's dreaming or not when the Doctor starts talking.

"River," he says, very softly. 

She doesn't stir. Her limbs are too sweetly heavy to move. She isn't certain she could speak if she wanted to. 

"River," he says again, and his voice is warm and lightly questioning. She breathes in and out, barely conscious of the warmth of his smooth skin against hers. 

"Tell me how to love you," he says, more quietly than before. "Because River, I don't know how. You deserve so much better than a sad, cantankerous old man who's got so little left to give. 

"There was a time," he goes on. "There was a time I could have given you everything. Both hearts, unstained, unburdened, freely and gladly. But I don't think you would have wanted the man I was back then. He wasn't...wise. Not that I am now, but I'm a bit cleverer now than I used to be. Comes with experience, I suppose." He sighs. "I was ordinary on Gallifrey. Less than ordinary. I was the least of my people. The only thing I was moderately good at was having a family. I had to steal a broken TARDIS to have an adventure. 

"The universe used to be wide and wonderful. Everything was bright. We fixed things, Susan and I and the others. We righted wrongs. We healed old wounds. I earned my name. I kept my promise. But things changed. Instead of fixing things, I splintered them. I couldn't heal anyone. I killed the Daleks and a thousand others. I locked my own people away for the rest of history. Now there's only grief, and regret. I used to help people for the pleasure of it. Now I help people to make up for my endless debts, knowing every moment that it will never be enough to heal the hurt I've caused. 

"My hearts are all over scars. There's no give left in them. Look at how I treated Martha. I failed her. I failed Rose. I've left everyone behind. I've used up the loyalty and the love that they've shown me and when they're gone, I go on. I just go on, endlessly, leaving behind the wreckage of people's lives. That wasn't always true. I wish it weren't true now, except that if it weren't, you wouldn't exist, and the universe would be missing something very special. Because you, River, you're a miracle. Everything that's happened to you and you still love me. You love your parents. You haven't given up on humanity or me and I can't understand it."

He's quiet for a long moment. 

"I can't possibly love you the way you deserve," he says at last. "And I can't possibly give up on loving you. My River." His voice is tender. "My warrior queen. The beacon of all my hopes. It isn't any of it fair to you, but I can't let go of a single minute of it."

She can feel the way his fingers tenderly coax the curls away from her face. 

"I wish I weren't such a coward," he says. "I could say this to you while you were awake if I were braver. But you're always the brave ones, and you especially. It takes a very brave person indeed to be the Doctor's wife. What a legacy I've left." 

He fits his body to the sleeping curve of hers. She's still too sleepy to rouse at his touch, mired deep in dreams.

"I hope you know," he whispers, barely audible. "Oh, River, I hope you know that you're the reason my hearts are still beating. I hope you know that I love you more than I could ever say. That isn't a good reason for not saying it, I realize, but there are bad days coming, and I've never been brave about pain. I spare myself any way I can. I'm sorry."

She wants to tell him that he's forgiven. She wants to tell him that she's always known. But sleep holds her like golden syrup, thick and sweet and giving everything an unreal glow. She surrenders to the pull of it, to the warmth and strength of the Doctor's embrace. He holds her and she dreams on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title comes from Shakepeare's _Antony and Cleopatra_.


	29. denouement

River knows the diary almost by heart. She's read and re-read it so many times, comparing notes with the Doctor and adding a line or two to her own entries. 

The thing is, she's running out of pages. She's written small all these years, tried not to take up too much space pasting in odds and ends (a sketch by Delacroix, the ticket stub for the premier performance of the antigrav ballet on Rigel 6, a pressed flower from the garden planet that scents the pages with its perfume even a decade later). Even her diagrams have been confined to the margins. Even with her words cramped up against each other on the worn pages, she's nearly out of space.

She wonders if she'll get another diary after this, a second volume to their adventures, as if her own diary could regenerate and give them back all the time in the worlds to spin their once upon a times. But she is terribly, bitterly, achingly afraid down to her bones that he has given her a diary with the right number of pages, because there is something that he knows which he will never tell her. She wonders what he will do with it when she is gone. Will he carry it with him, tucked into an inner pocket of his jacket, close to his heart? Will he hide it from himself in the library of the TARDIS? Or will he leave it where she leaves it, never bothering to turn the pages or to read the messages she has left for him, never bothering to relive the time they spent together? Her Doctor, the man who never forgets however hard he tries - will he manage to forget her? What face will he wear then? What life will he lead, and with whom? 

She still sleeps with the diary under her pillow, and sometimes wakes up with fingers cramped from clutching it.


	30. penultimate

(And that last kiss, that very last kiss in the ruins of the TARDIS, when she had surrendered the very last fragment of hope that she would ever reach him again.

And she raised her hand to slap sense into him one last time, and he caught her wrist, and for one brilliant shining moment, she was whole again.

 _You are always here to me, and I always listen, and I can always see you_ , he said, and her heart shivered into a thousand pieces, as fragmented as his time stream.

She would trade her soul to every god that exists to relive that kiss. The heat of his lips in the chill of the TARDIS tomb, the ways his hands trembled as they cupped her face, the urgent passion of his mouth, the way his heart lay bare to her touch at that moment in a way it never had before. And her arms at last around him, and the rasp of his tweed against her silk, and the way his body fit against hers like two shards of broken porcelain notching seamlessly together so that one could hardly see where it had been broken at all. And the scent of him and the life in him and the conscious ache of every minute he had lived without her, ever moment she had missed. But he had carried her with him, a song in his hearts, a tune on his lips, to the very last bar and beyond, holding the note of her as long as he had breath for it. Oh, heaven, that kiss, as if he could make up for every slight and every absence, as if he could apologize for every tiff and every chilly word. As if anything needed apologizing for, between them. As if they hadn't both done what needed to be done, to preserve every moment they could.

As if all the time there was would ever be enough to say everything they meant to say.

She touches her fingertips to her computer-generated lips, remembering.

She doesn't travel with him anymore; that ghost is gone, a memory caught in the wishful thoughts of her beloved TARDIS. But she waits for him, sustained by the strength of that kiss.)


	31. And what do all the great words come to in the end, but that?

River smooths her curls and fidgets with her hemline. It's been a long while since she had a proper body and it's making her fretful, a bit. She freezes at the sound of a footstep behind her, and then relaxes.

"And what sort of time do you call this?" she asks, not looking.

"Two minutes after five on the twenty-second of April," says a voice behind her, much more Scottish than she expected - that will be her mother's influence, no doubt. "More or less. There's no accounting for local time."

"Finally learned to take the brakes off, did you?" River asks. 

"I learned from the best," he tells her. She hears him step closer, and she can sense him hesitate, so she pivots on one heel.

"Hello, sweetie," she says warmly. "Happy anniversary. I'm not quite sure what anniversary is the gift of plastic and/or embodiment, but then again, I'm not quite sure what anniversary we're on."

He shakes his head and smiles a little. "It doesn't matter."

He's taller than last time, or maybe it's just that he's so much more dignified. He's given up on the baby face - it's all silver fox now. She quite likes it, although at the same time, her heart clutches at the thought of never nuzzling that pointy nose again, never negotiating with that chin, never running her fingers through that ridiculous fall of hair. He's still got the bow tie, but she wouldn't want to see him without it at this point. If he will insist on gallivanting all over the universe without her, at least he's wearing his wedding ring. 

"Your Clara helped," she says, answering his unspoken question. "I was connected to her when she went into the time stream. Vastra and Jenny helped find the right one. I called in a few favors from the Nestene - I think I make quite a fetching duplicate. Clever Clara downloaded me and well, here I am. And you - surely you're not just here to celebrate an anniversary. We've had loads of those since I was uploaded and you certainly never bothered to come 'round."

"I thought I might be finished," he says. "I thought it might be time. It's an emptier universe without you. I wouldn't have thought one person could make so much difference. They all make a difference, of course, but then there's you."

"One person can mean the world," she says. "One person can mean the difference between alive and living."

"Ah, well," he says. "You always knew." 

She longs to throw herself into his arms. They're new arms, but they're his arms; she's certain they'll feel the same around her. But she shifts her weight back onto her heels, unsure. "How do you like the new wheels?" she asks, batting her eyes at him. "I'm guaranteed it feels like the real thing." 

"You could never be anything but the real thing," he tells her. 

They gaze at each other. 

"Doctor," she says, her voice and her eyes level. "For our anniversary. What have you brought me?"

"All I have left," he says. He snaps his fingers and offers her his arm as the door of the TARDIS swings open. She takes it, resting her hand on the sleeve of his coat. He escorts her into the TARDIS and presses a button. A hologram appears, his previous face smiling at her from under that forelock, and River nearly gasps. 

"Idiot," she says. "You thought that was what I wanted?" She steps back from him, trembling with fury and sorrow.

He spreads his hands. "I've outlived too many people," he says. "I've done the things I meant to do. There must be a time to rest, River. Even for me." He tilts his head at her, his mouth twisted. "So I came home."

"You sentimental..." she begins, but stops and glares at him through the glaze of tears in her eyes. He smiles at her, a sad little gesture, and opens his arms, and she flings herself into them, kissing the sorrow out of his smile, kissing the loneliness out of the years apart, kissing the distance between them away until they are twined together so tightly they will never be undone. He buries his face in her hair, saying her name like a prayer, but it comes out a sob half the time.

"So," she says when at last they disengage from each other just enough that she can look into his eyes. New eyes. Old eyes. He feels the same against her and completely different. "Clearly what you meant to say, sweetie, was not 'Hello, wife, let's throw in the towel and retire to a life of computerized solitude together' but more along the lines of 'Hello, dear, how about one more round?' Because that's by far the more attractive option, and believe me, I've seen all your options."

"I could start again," he suggests.

"Shut up and put in the coordinates of a really good restaurant," she says. "I haven't had a proper drink in longer than I can remember, Vastra's little tea parties notwithstanding."

"Yes, we should get a drink," he says. "And married, probably - you haven't had a wedding with this face."

"It's called renewing our vows," she tells him. "And this time, I'm having a proper honeymoon. None of this back-to-business, I-suppose-the-world-didn't-end bit."

"Yes, dear," he says meekly, his eyes glinting with amusement. 

"You've got a lot to make up for," she tells him. "And I've got a new body and all the time in the world."

"Where do you want to start?" he asks.

"Everywhere," she breathes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title is from _Busman's Honeymoon_ by Dorothy Sayers. "And what do all the great words come to in the end, but that? I love you — I am at rest with you — I have come home."


End file.
